Ibn Khaldun Ibn Khaldun was born in 1332 in Tunis , where his ancestors had fled shortly before Seville fell to the Christian forces of Castille in 1248. Until 1382, when he was forty years old and settled in Cairo, Ibn Khaldun lived, Studied, and worked mainly in Tunis, Fez,and other towns and villages of North Africa. The region that includes the modern states of Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. He also spent brief periods of his adult life at the AraB Muslim Nasrid court of Granada, then the last state in al-Andalus or Andalusia, The Arab name for the Muslim-ruled areas of Portugal and Spain within Iberian Peninsula.
Early years in Tunis , Fez , Tlemcen and Granada At the age of 20, he began his political career at the Chancellery of the Tunisian ruler Ibn Tafrakin with the position of Kātib al-'Alāmah, which consisted of writing in finecalligraphy the typical introductory notes of official documents. In 1352, Abū Ziad, theSultan of Constantine, marched on Tunis and defeated it. Ibn Khaldūn, in any case unhappy with his respected but politically meaningless position, followed his teacher Abili toFez. Here theMarinid sultan Abū Inan Fares I appointed him as a writer of royal proclamations, which didn't prevent Ibn Khaldūn from scheming against his employer.
In 1357 this brought the 25-year-old a 22-month prison sentence. Upon the death of Abū Inan in 1358, the vizier al-Hasān ibn-Umar granted him freedom and reinstated him in his rank and offices. Ibn Khaldūn then schemed against Abū Inan's successor, Abū Salem Ibrahim III, with Abū Salem's exiled uncle, Abū Salem. When Abū Salem came to power, he gave Ibn Khaldūn a ministerial position, the first position which corresponded with Ibn Khaldūn's ambitions.
The treatment Ibn Khaldun received after the fall of Abū Salem through Ibn-Amar ʻAbdullah, a friend of Ibn Khaldūn's, was not to his liking, he received no significant official position. At the same time, Amar successfully prevented Ibn Khaldūn – whose political skills he was well aware of – from allying with the Abd al-Wadids in Tlemcen. Ibn Khaldūn therefore decided to move toGranada.
In Granada, Ibn Khaldūn quickly came into competition with Muhammad's vizier, Ibn al-Khatib, who saw the close relationship between Muhammad and Ibn Khaldūn with increasing mistrust.Ibn Khaldūn tried to shape the young Muhammad into his ideal of a wise ruler, an enterprise which Ibn al-Khatib thought foolish and a danger to peace in the country – and history proved him right At al-Khatib's instigation, Ibn Khaldūn was eventually sent back to North Africa. Al-Khatib himself was later accused by Muhammad of having unorthodox philosophical views, and murdered, despite an attempt by Ibn Khaldūn to intercede on behalf of his old rival.
In his autobiography, Ibn Khaldūn tells us little about his conflict with Ibn al-Khatib and the reasons for his departure. The orientalist Muhsin Mahdi interprets this as showing that Ibn Khaldūn later realised that he had completely misjudged Muhammad V. Back in Africa, theHafsid sultan ofBougie, Abū ʻAbdallāh, (who had been his companion in prison) received him with great enthusiasm, and made Ibn Khaldūn his prime minister. During this period, Ibn Khaldūn carried out a daring mission to collect taxes among the local Berber tribes. After the death of Abū ʻAbdallāh in 1366, Ibn Khaldūn changed sides once again and allied himself with theSultan og Tlemcen, Abū l-Abbas. A few years later he was taken prisoner byAbu Fariz Abdul Aziz, who had defeated the sultan of Tlemcen and seized the throne. He then entered a monastic establishment, and occupied himself with scholastic duties, until in 1370 he was sent for to Tlemcen by the new sultan. After the death of ʻAbdu l-Azīz, he resided at Fez, enjoying the patronage and confidence of the regent. Ibn Khaldūn's political skills, above all his good relationship with the wild Berber tribes, were in high demand among the North African rulers, whereas he himself began to tire of politics and constant switching of allegiances. In 1375, sent by Abū Hammu, the ʻAbdu l Wadid Sultan of Tlemcen, on a mission to the Dawadida Arabs tribes of Biskra. After his return to the West Ibn Khaldūn sought refuge with one of the Berber tribes, in the west of Algeria, in the town ofQalat Ibn Salama He lived there for over three years under their protection, taking advantage of his seclusion to write the Muqaddimah "Prolegomena", the introduction to his planned history of the world.
Muqaddimah Muqaddimah contains various regions( fez , Morocco , Tunis , Granada etc. ) that is Ibn Khaldun existed.İn composing the Muqaddimah , Ibn Khaldun assumed readers would be familiar with these closely entwined regions of the western Islamic world, a world he knew, analyzed, and, in certain respect, mourned. His theories are rooted in these regions’ geography, settlement patterns, histories, and societies, and if modern readers are to find their way through Ibn Khaldun’s sprawling work and come away with an accurate understanding of his science of man,they too must familarize themselves with world of Ibn Khaldun.
The original "introduction’’ to Ibn Khaldun's great History covers only a few pages.As is customary in Muslim historical works, these introductory pages contain a eulogy of history. This is followed by a discussion, illustrated with historical examples, of errors historians have committed and the reasons for them. One of these is a principal reason why even great historians occasionally err, namely, their ignorance of changes in the environment within which history unfolds. The remainder of what is now called the Muqaddimah originally constituted the first book of the History, and was designed to prove this thesis. It was intended to elucidate the fundamental principles of all history, which determine the true historian's reconstruction of the past.
However, during its author's lifetime the original introduction and the first book became an independent work known under the title of Muqaddimah. İn the 1394 edition of his Autobiography Ibn Khaldun speaks of the first book of his History in this way.
Thus, it is not surprising that, in a late addition to the Muqaddimah itself, Ibn Khaldun refers to it as the Muqaddimah and that he gave lectures exclusively devoted to it To all later ages,Muqaddimah as the title almost universally used.
Kitab al-’ıbar
Ibn Khaldūn main work is the Kitāb al-ʻIbar or "Book of Lessons" (full title: Kitāb al-ʻIbar wa-Dīwān al-Mubtadaʼ wa-l-Khabar fī Taʼrīkh al-ʻArab wa-l-Barbar wa-Man ʻĀṣarahum min Dhawī ash-Shaʼn al-Akbār "Book of Lessons, Record of Beginnings and Events in the History of the Arabs and the Berbers and Their Powerful Contemporaries"), originally conceived as a history of the Berber’s but later expanded in focus to a Universal history The Kitāb al-ʻIbār is divided into seven books, the first of which, the Muwaddimah or "Introduction", can be considered a separate work. Books two to five cover the History of mankind up to the time of Ibn Khaldūn. Books six and seven cover the history of theBerber people and the Maghreb. The work is an important source for Berber History, although Ibn Khaldun in parts relied on poor source material. His historiographical work has been criticised for often presenting only a synthesis of multiple (sometimes contradictory) sources where a more careful historian such as al-Raqiq or al-maliki would always give the original texts before pronouncing an opinion Concerning the discipline of sociology, he conceived a theory of Social conflict. He developed the dichotomy of sedentary life versus nomadic life as well as the concept of a "generation", and the inevitable loss of power that occurs when desert warriors conquer a city. Following a contemporary Arab scholar, Sati' al-Husri, the Muqaddimah may be read as a sociological work. Topics dealt with in this work include politics, urban life, economics, and knowledge. The work is based around Ibn Khaldun's central concept of aşabiyyeh, which has been translated as ‘’social cohesion’’, ‘’group solidarity’’, or ‘’tribaliz’’. This social cohesion arises spontaneously in tribes and other small kinship groups; it can be intensified and enlarged by a religious ideology. Ibn Khaldun's analysis looks at how this cohesion carries groups to power but contains within itself the seeds – psychological, sociological, economic, political – of the group's downfall, to be replaced by a new group, dynasty or empire bound by a stronger (or at least younger and more vigorous) cohesion. Ibn Khaldun has been cited as a racist, but his theories on the rise and fall of empires have no racial component, and this reading of his work has been claimed to be the result of mistranslations Perhaps the most frequently cited observation drawn from Ibn Khaldūn's work is the notion that when a society becomes a great civilization (and, presumably, the dominant culture in its region), its high point is followed by a period of decay. This means that the next cohesive group that conquers the diminished civilization is, by comparison, a group of barbarians. Once the barbarians solidify their control over the conquered society, however, they become attracted to its more refined aspects, such as literacy and arts, and either assimilate into or appropriate such cultural practices. Then, eventually, the former barbarians will be conquered by a new set of barbarians, who will repeat the process. Some contemporary readers of Khaldun have read this as an early business cycle theory, though set in the historical circumstances of the mature Islamic empire. Ibn Khaldun outlines an early (possibly even the earliest) example of political economy. He describes the economy as being composed of value adding process; that is, labour and skill is added to techniques and crafts and the product is sold at a higher value. He also made the distinction between "profit" and "sustenance", in modern political economy terms, surplus and that required for the reproduction of classes respectively. He also calls for the creation of a science to explain society and goes on to outline these ideas in his major work the Muqaddimah. Ibn Khaldun also emphasized on the Islamic Monetary System that the currency or money should haveintrinsic value. And it should be made up of Gold and Silver and Silver Dirham. He also emphasized that the weight and purity of these coins should be strictly followed. As the weight of one dinar should be one mithqal i.e. equal the weight of 72 grains of barley(equals to almost 4.25 grams) and the weight of 7 dinar should be equal to weight of 10 Dirhams (which equal 7/10 of Mithqal or 2.975 grams). And according to him these coins must be used in laws concerning the charity tax(in the islamic faith it is zakat), marriage (fees), fixed legal fines, and other things.
Finally , Ibn Khaldun was first brought to the attention of the Western world in 1697.
References
Stephen Frederic Dale - The orrang trees of Marrakesh (Harvard University press)
Süleyman Uludağ- Mukaddime 1-Mukaddime 2 (dergah yayınları)
Ahmet arslan - İbn-i Haldun
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen- The Postcolonial Middle Ages
Ibn Khaldun was born in 1332 in Tunis , where his ancestors had fled shortly before Seville fell to the Christian forces of Castille in 1248. Until 1382, when he was forty years old and settled in Cairo, Ibn Khaldun lived, Studied, and worked mainly in Tunis, Fez,and other towns and villages of North Africa. The region that includes the modern states of Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. He also spent brief periods of his adult life at the AraB Muslim Nasrid court of Granada, then the last state in al-Andalus or Andalusia, The Arab name for the Muslim-ruled areas of Portugal and Spain within Iberian Peninsula.
Early years in Tunis , Fez , Tlemcen and Granada
At the age of 20, he began his political career at the Chancellery of the Tunisian ruler Ibn Tafrakin with the position of Kātib al-'Alāmah, which consisted of writing in finecalligraphy the typical introductory notes of official documents. In 1352, Abū Ziad, theSultan of Constantine, marched on Tunis and defeated it. Ibn Khaldūn, in any case unhappy with his respected but politically meaningless position, followed his teacher Abili toFez. Here theMarinid sultan Abū Inan Fares I appointed him as a writer of royal proclamations, which didn't prevent Ibn Khaldūn from scheming against his employer.
In 1357 this brought the 25-year-old a 22-month prison sentence. Upon the death of Abū Inan in 1358, the vizier al-Hasān ibn-Umar granted him freedom and reinstated him in his rank and offices. Ibn Khaldūn then schemed against Abū Inan's successor, Abū Salem Ibrahim III, with Abū Salem's exiled uncle, Abū Salem. When Abū Salem came to power, he gave Ibn Khaldūn a ministerial position, the first position which corresponded with Ibn Khaldūn's ambitions.
The treatment Ibn Khaldun received after the fall of Abū Salem through Ibn-Amar ʻAbdullah, a friend of Ibn Khaldūn's, was not to his liking, he received no significant official position. At the same time, Amar successfully prevented Ibn Khaldūn – whose political skills he was well aware of – from allying with the Abd al-Wadids in Tlemcen. Ibn Khaldūn therefore decided to move toGranada.
In Granada, Ibn Khaldūn quickly came into competition with Muhammad's vizier, Ibn al-Khatib, who saw the close relationship between Muhammad and Ibn Khaldūn with increasing mistrust.Ibn Khaldūn tried to shape the young Muhammad into his ideal of a wise ruler, an enterprise which
Ibn al-Khatib thought foolish and a danger to peace in the country – and history proved him right At al-Khatib's instigation, Ibn Khaldūn was eventually sent back to North Africa. Al-Khatib himself was later accused by Muhammad of having unorthodox philosophical views, and murdered, despite an attempt by Ibn Khaldūn to intercede on behalf of his old rival.
In his autobiography, Ibn Khaldūn tells us little about his conflict with Ibn al-Khatib and the reasons for his departure. The orientalist Muhsin Mahdi interprets this as showing that Ibn Khaldūn later realised that he had completely misjudged Muhammad V.
Back in Africa, theHafsid sultan ofBougie, Abū ʻAbdallāh, (who had been his companion in prison) received him with great enthusiasm, and made Ibn Khaldūn his prime minister. During this period, Ibn Khaldūn carried out a daring mission to collect taxes among the local Berber tribes. After the death of Abū ʻAbdallāh in 1366, Ibn Khaldūn changed sides once again and allied himself with theSultan og Tlemcen, Abū l-Abbas. A few years later he was taken prisoner byAbu Fariz Abdul Aziz, who had defeated the sultan of Tlemcen and seized the throne. He then entered a monastic establishment, and occupied himself with scholastic duties, until in 1370 he was sent for to Tlemcen by the new sultan. After the death of ʻAbdu l-Azīz, he resided at Fez, enjoying the patronage and confidence of the regent.
Ibn Khaldūn's political skills, above all his good relationship with the wild Berber tribes, were in high demand among the North African rulers, whereas he himself began to tire of politics and constant switching of allegiances. In 1375, sent by Abū Hammu, the ʻAbdu l Wadid Sultan of Tlemcen, on a mission to the Dawadida Arabs tribes of Biskra. After his return to the West Ibn Khaldūn sought refuge with one of the Berber tribes, in the west of Algeria, in the town ofQalat Ibn Salama He lived there for over three years under their protection, taking advantage of his seclusion to write the Muqaddimah "Prolegomena", the introduction to his planned history of the world.
Muqaddimah
Muqaddimah contains various regions( fez , Morocco , Tunis , Granada etc. ) that is Ibn Khaldun existed.İn composing the Muqaddimah , Ibn Khaldun assumed readers would be familiar with these closely entwined regions of the western Islamic world, a world he knew, analyzed, and, in certain respect, mourned. His theories are rooted in these regions’ geography, settlement patterns, histories, and societies, and if modern readers are to find their way through Ibn Khaldun’s sprawling work and come away with an accurate understanding of his science of man,they too must familarize themselves with world of Ibn Khaldun.
The original "introduction’’ to Ibn Khaldun's great History covers only a few pages.As is customary in Muslim historical works, these introductory pages contain a eulogy of history. This is followed by a discussion, illustrated with historical examples, of errors historians have committed and the reasons for them. One of these is a principal reason why even great historians occasionally err, namely, their ignorance of changes in the environment within which history unfolds. The remainder of what is now called the Muqaddimah originally constituted the first book of the History, and was designed to prove this thesis. It was intended to elucidate the fundamental principles of all history, which determine the true historian's reconstruction of the past.
However, during its author's lifetime the original introduction and the first book became an independent work known under the title of Muqaddimah. İn the 1394 edition of his Autobiography Ibn Khaldun speaks of the first book of his History in this way.
Thus, it is not surprising that, in a late addition to the Muqaddimah itself, Ibn Khaldun refers to it as the Muqaddimah and that he gave lectures exclusively devoted to it To all later ages,Muqaddimah as the title almost universally used.
Kitab al-’ıbar
Ibn Khaldūn main work is the Kitāb al-ʻIbar or "Book of Lessons" (full title: Kitāb al-ʻIbar wa-Dīwān al-Mubtadaʼ wa-l-Khabar fī Taʼrīkh al-ʻArab wa-l-Barbar wa-Man ʻĀṣarahum min Dhawī ash-Shaʼn al-Akbār "Book of Lessons, Record of Beginnings and Events in the History of the Arabs and the Berbers and Their Powerful Contemporaries"), originally conceived as a history of the Berber’s but later expanded in focus to a Universal history
The Kitāb al-ʻIbār is divided into seven books, the first of which, the Muwaddimah or "Introduction", can be considered a separate work. Books two to five cover the History of mankind up to the time of Ibn Khaldūn. Books six and seven cover the history of theBerber people and the Maghreb. The work is an important source for Berber History, although Ibn Khaldun in parts relied on poor source material. His historiographical work has been criticised for often presenting only a synthesis of multiple (sometimes contradictory) sources where a more careful historian such as al-Raqiq or al-maliki would always give the original texts before pronouncing an opinion
Concerning the discipline of sociology, he conceived a theory of Social conflict. He developed the dichotomy of sedentary life versus nomadic life as well as the concept of a "generation", and the inevitable loss of power that occurs when desert warriors conquer a city. Following a contemporary Arab scholar, Sati' al-Husri, the Muqaddimah may be read as a sociological work. Topics dealt with in this work include politics, urban life, economics, and knowledge. The work is based around Ibn Khaldun's central concept of aşabiyyeh, which has been translated as ‘’social cohesion’’, ‘’group solidarity’’, or ‘’tribaliz’’. This social cohesion arises spontaneously in tribes and other small kinship groups; it can be intensified and enlarged by a religious ideology. Ibn Khaldun's analysis looks at how this cohesion carries groups to power but contains within itself the seeds – psychological, sociological, economic, political – of the group's downfall, to be replaced by a new group, dynasty or empire bound by a stronger (or at least younger and more vigorous) cohesion. Ibn Khaldun has been cited as a racist, but his theories on the rise and fall of empires have no racial component, and this reading of his work has been claimed to be the result of mistranslations
Perhaps the most frequently cited observation drawn from Ibn Khaldūn's work is the notion that when a society becomes a great civilization (and, presumably, the dominant culture in its region), its high point is followed by a period of decay. This means that the next cohesive group that conquers the diminished civilization is, by comparison, a group of barbarians. Once the barbarians solidify their control over the conquered society, however, they become attracted to its more refined aspects, such as literacy and arts, and either assimilate into or appropriate such cultural practices. Then, eventually, the former barbarians will be conquered by a new set of barbarians, who will repeat the process. Some contemporary readers of Khaldun have read this as an early business cycle theory, though set in the historical circumstances of the mature Islamic empire.
Ibn Khaldun outlines an early (possibly even the earliest) example of political economy. He describes the economy as being composed of value adding process; that is, labour and skill is added to techniques and crafts and the product is sold at a higher value. He also made the distinction between "profit" and "sustenance", in modern political economy terms, surplus and that required for the reproduction of classes respectively. He also calls for the creation of a science to explain society and goes on to outline these ideas in his major work the Muqaddimah.
Ibn Khaldun also emphasized on the Islamic Monetary System that the currency or money should haveintrinsic value. And it should be made up of Gold and Silver and Silver Dirham. He also emphasized that the weight and purity of these coins should be strictly followed. As the weight of one dinar should be one mithqal i.e. equal the weight of 72 grains of barley(equals to almost 4.25 grams) and the weight of 7 dinar should be equal to weight of 10 Dirhams (which equal 7/10 of Mithqal or 2.975 grams). And according to him these coins must be used in laws concerning the charity tax(in the islamic faith it is zakat), marriage (fees), fixed legal fines, and other things.
Finally , Ibn Khaldun was first brought to the attention of the Western world in 1697.
References
Stephen Frederic Dale - The orrang trees of Marrakesh (Harvard University press)
Süleyman Uludağ- Mukaddime 1-Mukaddime 2 (dergah yayınları)
Ahmet arslan - İbn-i Haldun
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen- The Postcolonial Middle Ages
http://www.muslimphilosophy.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Khaldun